Public Libraries: The Seattle Times Publishes Editorial on Library Funding

A seven-year Seattle Library Levy is the wrong way to pay for an essential day-to-day service.

Free public libraries are an essential service. They are about reading, which is about education, personal achievement, and democracy. Because libraries are such good things, they should not be offered up to voters in politically constructed take-it-or-leave-it choices.

That is what has happened with the public schools. Their levies, which were supposed to be for extras, are now needed to keep the doors open. Let’s not do this with libraries.

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This current levy proposal is mostly for libraries’ day-to-day expenses, and these are neither optional nor one-time. They are essential and ongoing. They should be paid from general taxes, the same as police and fire services.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.